"Write a Greeting for Your Email Here": Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
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Research Article
“Write a Greeting for Your Email
Here”: Principles for Assessing
Interpersonal Workplace Email
Communication
Bethany Aull, Universidad de Sevilla
Laura Aull, University of Michigan
Structured Abstract
• Background: The emergence of business communication training, with special
emphasis on digitally delivered simulation involving complex tasks, suggests that
professional preparedness relies not only on work-related knowledge, but on
communicative competencies as well. In fact, the American Management
Association’s 2010 Critical Skills Survey identified “effective communication,”
or “the ability to synthesize and transmit your ideas both in written and oral
formats,” as one of the four central skills employers value (2019). These
competencies are complex, ranging from face-to-face to email correspondence,
and from inter-colleague to cross-hierarchical interaction. In the workplace, these
multifaceted communicative demands are often tacit, but various realms
contribute to their elucidation, including research addressing workplace
communication, training methods, and assessment measures. In particular,
investigations of business interactions in English have highlighted both
transactional—e.g., work-related—and interpersonal—i.e., relational—discourses
(Koester, 2006), and further study has shown that these discourses differ
according to the interactants’ relationship (e.g., Vine, 2004), the workplace
environment (e.g., Waldvogel, 2007), and the medium and genre (e.g., Gains,
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/JWA-J.2021.5.1.07 215Aull & Aull
1999; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). Research has highlighted email not only as a
prominent workplace communication medium, but one with different
characteristics from those of spoken conversation. Importantly for professionals,
appropriate use of these features in different email situations and genres is often
central to effective task realization, collaboration, and interpersonal relations.
These demands propel various employee training initiatives incorporating email
communication and requiring adequate measures of learning. One such initiative,
a prototype named Kitchen Design (KD), emphasizes email writing in various
simulated workplace situations. It moreover gives explicit attention to both
primarily transactional discourse, such as a meeting content summary, and
primarily interpersonal discourse, like an email’s greeting and audience-specific
formality. The KD prototype highlights necessary connection between training
initiatives, on one hand, and communication data and effective assessment design,
on the other. This article seeks to bridge research findings on English workplace
communication, teaching, and assessment along with KD task examples, offering
a meta-analytic synthesis to help guide pedagogy and assessment of email
workplace communication.
• Questions Addressed: We pose two exploratory questions: First, what is the
nature of workplace email communication, and what are its goals? Answering this
question is relevant to workplace training and involves attention to the diverse
knowledge domains employees may be explicitly, and even implicitly, asked to
master. In particular, interpersonal, rhetorical, and genre knowledge may be
expected upon hiring, but often remains vaguely defined. To address these more
tacit dimensions, we review relevant research on workplace emails and identify
several considerations which can inform and enhance such communications’
teaching and assessment. Specifically, these considerations underscore workplace
email’s multifaceted and often unique aspects in terms of discourse and genre
features, transactional and interpersonal goals, and participant and relationship
factors. We use several examples from KD tasks to demonstrate how to connect
linguistic research with workplace communication training, and how we can
ensure professional learners are equipped with an understanding of these ranging
aspects. We discuss learners as professional trainees and future employees who
undergo instruction in English-language workplace communication. More
specifically, and hence more briefly, we explore a second question: What are
possible approaches and challenges for assessment of workplace email
communication? Here, we consolidate existing assessments from professional
training programs as well as from academic disciplines like English for specific
purposes. Informed by these practices, and by our previous observations on the
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 216Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
nature of workplace email communication, we reflect on considerations for
assessment designers, especially when approaching elicited workplace emails and
their interpersonal aspects. These reflections recognize the importance of renewed
evidence for formative assessment models such as KD. They moreover emphasize
the need for ongoing workplace email data collection. At the same time, they
underscore the epistemic role of all models in asserting what knowledge and skills
are assessment-worthy.
• Conclusions: In closing, we propose a number of principles to guide assessment
of workplace email communication. We outline three overarching principles for
assessing English-language workplace email communication along with related
implications. These invoke (1) the importance of addressing, in workplace
communication development, the particular, multifarious characteristics of these
communications through email and their interpersonal aspects; (2) the need to
inform and update assessment with ongoing investigation of authentic data; and
(3) responsible assessment design and use of results as informative data.
Keywords: assessment design, email, interpersonal discourse, meta-analytical synthesis,
professional training, Workplace English Communication (WEC), writing analytics
1.0 Background
Over 25 years ago, John Johnson (1994) argued that limited understanding of human
communication persisted because researchers had “avoided seriously looking at how the various
levels and forms (e.g., intrapersonal, interpersonal, public)” interface with each other (p. 170). In
turn, Johnson proposed a new schema, categorizing spoken language as “intrapersonal” versus
“extrapersonal,” with additional subcategories for each. By the 21st century, new labels
categorized internet-mediated communication clearly between spoken and written
communication: Crystal (2001) used the term “Netspeak,” Yus (2011) referred to “oralized
written text” features (p. 225), and Tagliamonte and Denis (2008) described a “unique new
hybrid register” (p. 3). More recently, Gretchen McCulloch (2019) opened her book Because
Internet with four quadrants of human communication: informal speaking, formal speaking,
informal writing, and formal writing. McCulloch places internet writing in the “informal writing”
quadrant and underscores its wide accessibility and its focus on efficiency and spontaneity.
Research specifically concerned with workplace communication likewise identifies
categories for a range of communicative tasks. Goal-oriented categories include “transactional”
versus “interpersonal” (or “relational”) discourses. Examples of the former include “briefing”
(Koester, 2006) and “information sharing” (Keyton et al., 2013). The latter includes
communication focused on “relationship management,” such as joking or small talk (Keyton et
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 217Aull & Aull
al., 2013). In these and other sources over time, linguists and educators take pains to create
categories that explain the nature and demands of different kinds of human communication, not
because they can be cleanly separated but because it can be analytically and pedagogically useful
to try. Differentiating communicative goals can help highlight competencies we might take for
granted in habituated tasks. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
(2017), for instance, have identified core interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies integral to
workplace and academic success and to economic attainment, health, and civic engagement.
Delineating varied discourse goals is particularly important for fair and accurate assessment.
In contemporary workplace communication, different tasks entail different expectations, and the
stakes are high for employees striving to obtain and maintain jobs. Education Week reported that
employers value oral and written communication as among the most important skills for
employees (Gewert, 2018). The National Association of Colleges and Employers likewise has
emphasized the crucial role of oral and written communication (Nunamaker et al., 2017). Lentz
(2013) reported that writing skills must become an employee’s “habit” if they are to succeed in
contemporary workplaces. Meanwhile, myriad concerns from national organizations like the
American Management Corporation and regional and statewide business organizations suggest
that many new employees are not fulfilling these expectations (Kleckner & Marshall, 2014). It is
not only the employees but also employers who suffer in these instances: Poor communication
skills can negatively impact businesses in a range of ways, including by tarnishing a brand
image, decreasing employee productivity, and causing ineffective or erroneous decision-making,
misinterpretations, and mismanagement (Kleckner & Marshall, 2014). Many employers therefore
seem to expect new hires to come with considerable communication skills, even if those skills
remain implicit or only vaguely stated.
Of key importance is that workplace communication includes not only written and oral skills
traditionally addressed in schooling but also internet-mediated forms like email, which are often
addressed in professional and technical writing courses but not always addressed in general
English writing courses. Judging by the number of online resources offering advice about
workplace email, this kind of communication is not only crucial for employee and workplace
success but also entails language use somewhere between written and oral registers and formal
and informal discourse (e.g., Sun, 2019; University of North Carolina Writing Center, n.d.). Add
to that various transactional and interpersonal considerations—the particular goal, hierarchy, and
context of a given email in a given workplace for a given employee—and it is clear that
navigating workplace email communication requires adaptive and varied knowledge. As in other
communication, email tasks draw on multiple competencies as well as metacognitive recognition
of one’s own needs and skills with respect to those competencies.
These increasingly complex demands have led to increasingly sophisticated approaches for
preparing employees through instruction. Various branches of communication research have
opened up channels between investigative findings and professional training; for instance, corpus
linguists like Almut Koester, Michael McCarthy, and Michael Handford have offered insights
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 218Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
into workplace communication tendencies which can serve instruction and assessment design
(for a review, see Handford, 2012). Other organizational communication research such as the
Wellington Language in the Workplace Project has also been directly applied to several
workplace communication courses (Holmes, 2000c; Riddiford & Joe, 2005). Though workplace
email communication is complex and consequential for professional success and business
relationships (Mulholland, 2014), evidence shows that it can be improved through instruction
(e.g., Christner et al., 2010).
In turn, training learners entails assessment which accounts for these varied expectations.
Innovations in assessment including Evidence-Centered Design and automated scoring reflect
growing awareness of the need to be able to effectively and efficiently assess intricate tasks
(Foltz et al., 2020). Initiatives like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development’s (OEDC) Framework for Collaborative Problem Solving, the Assessment and
Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21s), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills address
measurement of complex, higher-level skills such as critical thinking and collaboration (for a
review, see Foltz et al., 2020). The Society for Technical Communication (STC) supports
building a body of knowledge to connect technical communication research and its development
and assessment (e.g., Coppola, 2010). These assessment models reflect increasing attention to
“soft skills,” like interpersonal communication, as complementary to the “hard skills,” or
particular subject knowledge, required for an occupation (Schulz, 2008).
Still, these models take a broad approach, potentially disattending the particular demands of
interpersonal workplace communication through email. One training program focusing on
Workplace English Communication (WEC)—defined as a form of sophisticated discourse in
which organizational and disciplinary norms for framing and communicating information are
used for a variety of aims—is a prototype named Kitchen Design (KD). KD is a digitally
delivered simulation involving complex tasks. Between 2018 and 2020, a prototype was
developed using a scenario-based approach in which modules present opportunities for students
to learn WEC by working in a fictitious company that specializes in designing and overseeing
the construction of commercial and private kitchens. (For more on the prototype, see in this
issue: Oliveri, Mislevy, & Slomp, 2021; Oliveri, Slomp, Elliot, et al., 2021; Oliveri et al., 2021a,
2021b; Slomp et al., 2021.) KD focuses specifically on communicative business skills and
placing notable emphasis on email communication. The KD prototype comprises progressive
modules, starting with a foundation-laying lesson on email writing and then moving into the KD
story. This story sets up a virtual roleplay in which the learner works on a team project to
propose and design a model kitchen. Along with team members Amy, Victor, and Dmitri, the
learner also interacts with other office members, including a manager (Volk) and a client
(Miguel). Through a thread of scenarios, the tasks first emphasize recognition—e.g., organizing
received emails in order of importance and identifying un/necessary information to be included
in a given email. The tasks build to production—e.g., composing a scheduling email—and at
each stage they elicit reflection on choices made by the learner. These tasks together create the
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module’s assessment in which task realization is evaluated progressively, from multiple choice
options to rubric-scored writing.
Yet the work of assessing workplace email communication does not stop with the one-time
creation of tasks such as the KD prototype. It requires ongoing efforts, including reviewing and
validating assessments like the KD tasks alongside other research on workplace communication.
This dynamic approach supports assessment research and design that is attentive to evolving
characteristics and demands of workplace email communication.
This brings us back to our opening: It is no small task to categorize human communication,
let alone clarify and assess its corresponding expectations for workplaces. It is in response to this
exigency that the current special issue brings together workplace communication research,
training, and assessment perspectives, to consider how to better prepare learners for professional
communicative demands. By way of example, we draw from the KD initiative, which responds
to these demands by creating progressive communicative tasks situated in simulated business
scenarios. Using these examples alongside our review of existing research, we speak to how
these assessments can be responsibly addressed and themselves assessed.
2.0 Questions Addressed
In this article, we offer a literature review and discussion of research on workplace
communication and assessment, then outlines principles for contemplating and assessing
workplace email communication that can be adapted and extended for future tools. The first part
takes the form of a meta-analytic synthesis, meaning it compiles relevant research findings and
draws a number of considerations for assessment, both of which it exemplifies through prototype
KD modules. The considerations extracted pertain to two questions which we explore in the
following order:
1. What is the nature of workplace email communication, and what are its goals?
2. What are possible approaches and challenges for assessment of workplace email
communication?
We begin our synthesis broadly, offering a conceptual map of related competencies and
knowledge, before continuing vis-à-vis what characterizes workplace email communication and
its corresponding possibilities and challenges for learning and assessment. In answering these
questions, we consolidate relevant research in order to innovate workplace communication
teaching, in the case of the first question, and assessment, in the second. We close by offering
working principles for future efforts to analyze and assess workplace email communication. To
help illustrate the competencies, characteristics, and principles we describe, we draw on
examples from KD tasks. In particular, we use these example tasks to highlight how workplace
email communication engages interpersonal goals and discourse, rather than only transactional
goals and discourse that may be more obvious. While a meta-analysis of this kind is only an
initial step toward a comprehensive taxonomy for analyzing and assessing workplace email
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communication, it encourages ongoing, thoughtful connection between research, practice, and
assessment design. This approach can offer insight to formative assessment development, and the
range of contemporary research, existing tools like the KD tasks, and the importance of adaptive,
practical support for learners make such an initial step valuable and timely.
2.1 Question 1: What Is the Nature of Workplace Email Communication, and What Are Its
Goals?
Workplace email communication today engages a variety of purposes and audiences. The KD
tasks, for instance, incorporate diverse emailing situations: purposes from scheduling meeting
times, submitting proposals, informing, and making requests, and audiences from a supervisor, to
team members, to a client. Through these diverse tasks, learners are expected to develop and
enact relevant discourse community knowledge. According to Slomp et al. (2018), discourse
community knowledge involves the “ability to identify and respond to the unique constellation of
values and expectations of the communities within which or for which one is writing”—in this
case, those relevant to professional businesses (p. 85).
When it comes to workplace email communication, the “unique constellation of values and
expectations” may be very new even for learners with knowledge from other discourse
communities such as those from family or school. What is more, aspects of these discourses,
such as the genres, linguistic features, and pragmatic norms of email, evolve as participants adapt
them to their discourse community’s needs. It can be helpful, then, to break down discourse
community knowledge into more specific components, while also recognizing that
metacognition—self-awareness and self-regulation with respect to related abilities and
practices—can help guide learners. Figure 1 below visually captures the subcomponents of
rhetorical and discourse community knowledge, nested within related metacognitive and critical
discourse knowledge. (For more on the design and development of Figure 1, see Corrigan &
Slomp, 2021, this issue.)
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 221Aull & Aull Figure 1 Sociocognitive Construct Model of Writing Expertise (Corrigan & Slomp, 2021, this issue) As the figure shows, Corrigan and Slomp (2021) represent rhetorical aim and discourse community knowledge as balanced components. Rhetorical aim knowledge involves awareness of audience and correspondent relationships, and discourse community knowledge involves taking these factors into account to communicate with appropriate information, format, formality, and politeness. Based on the KD model, these aspects subsume three overlapping subcomponents: genre knowledge, substantive or subject-matter knowledge, and knowledge of the communication task process. Genre knowledge involves an understanding of how the community uses textual choices such as appropriate organization and formality for different tasks which, though not clean-cut or exclusive, demonstrate “family resemblances” within genres (Swales, 1990). Knowledge of genre also involves mastery of content and vocabulary, which The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 222
Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
simultaneously forms a part of substantive knowledge. Writing process knowledge relates to how
to carry out various stages of composition, from planning to proofreading. Thus each
subcomponent overlaps with and is relevant to the others, and all come into play when
communicating.
In workplace email communication, all of these knowledge subcomponents involve work-
related as well as relationship-dependent values and expectations. And some of these may be
more obvious than others for learners new to business discourse communities. For instance,
while writing process steps may feel familiar for learners accustomed to writing in school,
rhetorical and relational demands related to workplace audiences may be less salient but equally
important.
If we connect these ideas to broader competencies—or what the National Research Council
(2012) and White et al. (2015) call knowledge domains—we gain additional ways to consider the
range of cognitive, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and neurological competencies involved in
workplace email communication (see also Elliot & Aull, 2021). In Figure 2, we have combined
Corrigan and Slomp’s (2021, this issue) knowledge map with White et al.’s (2015) domains in
order to illustrate how we might simultaneously consider multiple competencies and discourse
community knowledge subcomponents in a single taxonomic map (see also Elliot & Aull, 2021).
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 223Aull & Aull Figure 2 Competencies Involved in Workplace Email Communication Drawing from this model, workplace email communication depends on cognitive abilities, such as selecting appropriate vocabulary and content and producing coherent genre structure, as well as interpersonal abilities, such as making apt rhetorical distinctions in addressing peer colleagues versus superiors. Thus, one important challenge for developing learning and assessment opportunities is to ensure that learners gain practice in perceiving and carrying out these varied expectations. The sections below detail three sets of characteristics and considerations of workplace email communication, based on inferences drawn from the research we review. Of course, these three considerations will be influenced by particular workplace contexts; some contexts, for example, may have email communication length limits or a preponderance of younger or older workers (Turnage, 2007). Contextual details will influence the realization of the following considerations, which highlight varied expectations. The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 224
Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
2.1.1 Consideration 1: Workplace Email Communication Includes Diverse and Distinctive
Features
Research specifically focused on workplace email is still limited, so we consider characteristics
of workplace email by drawing inferences from a few related areas of research. These areas
address (a) spoken workplace interaction, (b) non-electronic written workplace communication,
and (c) email communication generally. Complementary findings across these areas suggest that
workplace emails blend genre expectations from both spoken and non-electronic written
communication while also displaying unique, medium-specific features.
First, research into spoken workplace interaction shows that it differs from non-work spoken
interaction. Early work by Drew and Heritage (1992) and Yates and Orlikowski (1992) laid
important foundations for this inquiry. Drew and Heritage have argued that workplace
communication is more restricted because its use and interpretation are more oriented toward
specific goals. Koester’s (2006, 2010) later findings further demonstrate that spoken workplace
communication includes distinctive features in terms of structure, lexico-grammatical features,
communicative goals, and constitutive genres, or what Yates and Orlikowski define as “typified
communicative actions invoked in recurrent situations and characterized by similar substance
and form” (1992, p. 319). In organizational settings, these authors identify a number of specific
workplace genres, such as memos and meetings, which “serve as an institutionalized template for
social action—an organizing structure—that shapes the ongoing communicative actions of
community members through their use of it” (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, p. 542). Delineating
genres in this sense (as opposed to, for example, Miller’s [1984] broader conceptualization),
Koester (2006) identified 11 genres in her corpus of spoken business English, listed here in order
of frequency: decision-making, procedural and directive discourse, briefing, arrangements, small
talk, service encounters, office gossip, reporting, discussing and evaluating, requesting, and
“liminal talk” for gradually exiting a conversation.
As in spoken interactions, workplace email communications involve a plurality of genres
which interplay with unique medium factors. Several scholars have simplified this complexity by
classifying email communication as a single genre (e.g., Baron, 1998). This view conflates
medium with genre, but other researchers (e.g., Yates & Orlikowski, 1992) take the two to be
separate, albeit interacting, aspects. While medium practices and affordances can favor or
disfavor certain genres, medium generally provides the “physical means” by which genres are
generated (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, p. 319). The precise genres of email have not been named,
in part because email is perceived as “more a moving linguistic target than a stable system”
(Baron, 1998, p. 144). Nevertheless, there are apparent differences in how users compose emails
aimed at distinct communicative actions. Gains (1999) has identified several recurring “tasks” of
this kind, many of which coincide with Koester’s spoken workplace genres. Gains’ small-scale
study focused on email communication in two workplaces, where he found that senders typically
used email to inform, request, respond, promote, praise or scold, direct, and “occasionally to
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have fun” (p. 97). Notably, the communicative actions informing/briefing, requesting, and
directing appear in both Gains’ email “tasks” and Koester’s spoken workplace “genres.”
Unlike Koester (2006), Gains’ (1999) email tasks did not include decision-making, and this
divergence may hint at email’s use for more unidirectional goals (Koester, 2006). In other words,
email may be especially useful when transacting across workplace hierarchies. Sproull and
Kiesler (1986) made such a discovery in their early workplace email study, in which employees
preferred to use email for correspondence up the hierarchy. The authors suggested this may be
owing to some “status equalization” afforded by email’s diminished visual reminders as
compared to face-to-face communication (p. 1507). The written medium may also serve a
documentation function particularly useful for cross-hierarchical, unidirectional activities like
report- and memo-distributing (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994). By the same token, more recent
research has suggested that workplace authority figures also benefit from this equalizing effect to
show solidarity toward subordinates (Skovholt et al., 2015). We return to considerations of
workplace roles and hierarchies later in this section.
Research has also indicated that workplace email communication resembles offline
workplace writing in some ways. In fact, Gains (1999) reported that his commercial-sector email
corpus overwhelmingly followed business-letter conventions. In particular, he found high levels
of formality and hardly any a-grammatical or “conversational” features, as have been associated
with email as online discourse (e.g., Herring, 2001). Abbasian and Tahririan (2008) made similar
observations of professional emails between biologists. Moreover, when analyzing these emails
in contrast with emails between English as a foreign language (EFL) educators to identify genre
patterns, they were able to identify an overarching move structure. This comprised six common
and ordered moves: establishing the communication information chain, establishing the territory,
providing information or answers, requesting for information or action, evaluating, and closing.
Besides these observations, however, the corpora analyzed by Abbasian and Tahririan (2008)
and Gains (1999) showed considerable variation. Gains compared his commercial emails to
professional emails among academics and concluded that the emails “[do] not constitute a single,
recognizable genre” in that “it neither represents a single discourse community, nor encompasses
communicative events which share a common purpose” (p. 99). More specifically, Gains found
that in contrast to the business-letter emails of the commercial-sector corpus, the academics’
emails included a broader range of conventions and informal features. The teachers’ emails in
Abbasian and Tahririan’s study showed similar flexibility. That is, rather than presenting new
workplace genres, email communication from different workplaces may allow for distinct
characteristics and a broader or more narrow range of features. This dynamism may, in fact, be
constitutive of email: It may allow for a wider range of formality and informality, and blurred
boundaries between each, than in traditional non-electronic writing. Abbasian and Tahririan
suggested that their findings, in which variation itself varied, may result from the “dynamic
nature” of email's response to “the rhetorical and functional needs of the discourse communities
and purposes” (2008, p. 16). In other words, each community adapts a “genre repertoire” whose
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resources are recognizable but also specialized for its members (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994;
Swales, 1990).
Thus, different workplaces can form diverse discourse communities, or what Waldvogel
(2007) has referred to as different “workplace cultures.” In her email analysis across two New
Zealand workplace sectors and environments, Waldvogel (2007) found divergent approaches to
email openings and closings: The “familiar workplace culture” gave rise to more interpersonal
aims in the form of phatic opening and closing remarks, while this was not the case in the
company in which hierarchy was emphasized. In both cases, these interpersonal sequences were
infrequent, but they were scarcer in the markedly hierarchical setting. On the other hand, almost
all of the emails in Bou-Franch’s (2011) study contained openings and closings. These emails,
though workplace-internal, came from a university setting in Spain and may have reflected a
“people first, business second” style in the Spanish language and culture. Hence, in addition to
Abbasian and Tahririan’s (2008) and Gains’ (1999) findings of cross-occupational variation in
email norms, Waldvogel’s and Bou-Franch’s studies offer initial evidence that workplace
discourse communities may vary according to culture both in a broad and local sense.
Other research in electronic workplace communication shows a range of features commonly
associated with online discourses. For instance, several accounts have identified more informal
features, such as abbreviations and non-standard spelling, in electronic as opposed to non-
electronic workplace writing (Gimenez, 2000). In his study of commercial business emails,
Gimenez (2000) observed a number of informality indicators, including spoken-language
features, syntactic simplicity, demonstrative modifiers, and ellipsis, which he interpreted as
indicating a “tendency towards a more flexible register” (p. 237). Skovholt et al. (2014) also
found emoticons in their workplace email analysis. According to the authors, these emoticons
served as contextualization cues in three ways: signaling positive affect, marking humor, and
modifying illocutionary force (e.g., strengthening or softening speech acts). In turn, the authors
suggest, these cues’ informality contributes to their function as “solidarity markers” (p. 793).
Previous email communication research has underscored that women, particularly, exploit
emoticons for such purposes (Wolf, 2000). Emoticons are not just observed in research, but
defended as acceptable in The New York Times’ “Work Friend” advice column. In response to a
question about emoticons’ appropriacy in work emails, columnist Alison Green (2019) wrote,
“An occasional smiley face at the end of a message can help convey tone when it might
otherwise be misinterpreted and is usually fine in all but the most formal of offices.”
In a non-work study, Maíz-Arévalo (2015) has nevertheless argued that emoticons do not
necessarily render communication informal. Maíz-Arévalo’s participants, unacquainted students
engaging in task-based interaction through an e-forum, made frequent use of emoticons and
considerably less use of “typographic alterations” such as vowel elongation and repeated
punctuation. Moreover, emoticons emerged both early on in the study and in several phases of
interaction. Typographic alterations, on the other hand, occurred mostly in the latter stages of the
exchange and in opening and, especially, closing phases of interaction. Maíz-Arévalo therefore
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implies that emoticons are pragmatically useful and unmarked in formal contexts, while
typographic alterations do introduce greater informality which is appropriate at certain points in
conversation. She attests to these cues’ primarily interpersonal use to “boost rapport, face save
and occasionally express . . . emotions” (p. 144). These considerations relate to multiple
knowledge domains portrayed in Figure 2; emoticons are visual elements which involve
neurological competence, but knowing when and how to use them entails cognitive,
intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies in order to engage the appropriate rhetorical and
genre knowledge.
Other more clearly informal features, such as phrasal shortcuts and typos, also attest to
multiple domains at play in workplace email communication. Jensen (2009) found that phrasal
shortcuts were most frequent in the final phase of his study. Furthermore, though there appeared
to be no external email editing or supervision in any phase, Jensen also reported an increase of
seemingly unintentional cues, e.g., “typos”: Businesspeople were less vigilant of errors in their
emails once they had secured a firm business relationship with their receivers.
In sum, the above research suggests that workplace email communications (a) include
features and tasks similar to spoken and non-electronic written workplace communication, but
may be particularly useful for unidirectional and cross-hierarchical communications, (b) may
include more informal features than offline work-related letters, and (c) show considerable
variation depending on a number of factors such as the writers’ relationship and workplace
environment. Just as these varying features, from email opening strategies to emoticon use, form
part of these communications and their multiple knowledge domains, they can have a place in
their instruction and assessment.
2.1.2 Consideration 2: Workplace Email Communication is Interpersonal and Transactional
In addition to indicating email’s particular characteristics, the above research reflects that
workplace communication encompasses discourses driven by both work-related or “transactional
goals” and interpersonal or “relational goals” (Koester, 2006, p. 26). Transactional goals refer to
those aims focused on work-related tasks, such as noting specifications for a product or making a
timeline for a project, while interpersonal goals refer to those focused on relationship
management and are associated with workers’ emotional wellbeing and engagement (Hynes,
2012). Since these distinctive goals are manifest through linguistic features and patterns, we
focus on what we will call transactional discourse and interpersonal discourse.
Transactional discourse has taken center stage in workplace communication research, likely
influenced by ground-laying scholars like Drew and Heritage (1992), who named it a constitutive
feature. Numerous studies have analyzed transactional discourse such as informing, reporting,
and requesting in intra-organizational activities like meetings (e.g., Asmuß & Svennevig, 2009;
Svennevig, 2012) and memo writing (e.g., Orlikowski & Yates, 1994). Koester’s (2006) analysis
of workplace communication genres also supports transactional discourse’s prominence: It made
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up 86 percent of her corpus, leaving interpersonal discourse as a leftover “non-transactional”
category (p. 21).
To briefly illustrate transactional discourse, we look at some work-oriented tasks in the KD
prototype. For example, one task involves composing an email to a client, Miguel, regarding the
model kitchen project. The task displays a prompt for each section of the email, so an initial
prompt asks the learner to inform by providing “an opening statement” which signals the
transactional purpose of the email. The subsequent prompt introduces the central aim of
requesting information from the client, which requires summarizing the questions gathered from
the team. Later email tasks introduce further transactional goals and discourse, such as
consolidating background research on a kitchen robot to determine its usefulness, and explaining
this position.
To contemplate interpersonal discourse, we likewise look to research findings and a brief KD
example. For example, some scholars have given special attention to interpersonal discourse in
workplace settings. In one early study of spoken workplace communication, Whittaker et al.
(1994) found that 31 percent of one office’s communications could be categorized as “informal”
talk, by which they refer to conversation which dealt with interpersonal as opposed to work
topics, such as the phatic opening and closing phases. Brown and Lewis’ (2003) study of
conversations in the pay office of a New Zealand factory observed an even higher proportion of
interpersonal interaction. Approximately half of the authentic conversations they recorded for
their study related to non-work topics, including “often highly personal” topics (p. 95). Holmes’
(2000a) work has highlighted the role of workplace small talk in rapport-building, a function
which can be especially important for professionals using English as a lingua franca (Holmes,
2005; Pullin, 2010). Though interpersonal discourse is prevalent, Keyton et al. (2013) noted that
“[t]oo frequently, relationally oriented communication at work is eschewed over task-related
communication” (p. 164).
These studies reflect that both discourses are at play in workplaces. It is thus unsurprising
that they often co-occur, and many scholars have offered classifications acknowledging their
distinct goals. For instance, we have mentioned that Koester (2006) sorted the genres identified
in her corpus along these lines. These genres fell into primarily “transactional genres” (e.g.,
briefing, procedural and directive discourse, requesting, reporting, decision-making) and
primarily “relational genres” (e.g., office gossip and small talk). This echoes McCarthy’s (2000)
study of conversations between service providers and customers: He classified the range of
topics between “transactional talk” and “interpersonal talk.” Holmes (2000a) has broken this
gradation down in four types: (1) core business talk (task-focused), (2) work-related talk, (3)
social talk, and (4) phatic communion (interpersonally-focused).
Often, however, these discourses are highly blended. Even when handling transactional
goals, interactants curate face, or “public self-image” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 61), through
interpersonal discourse. Tasks like this that solicit interpersonal discourse can be related to
sociolinguistic concepts of face-work (Goffman, 1967), politeness strategies (Brown &
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Levinson, 1987), rapport management (Spencer-Oatey, 2000), relational practice (Holmes &
Marra, 2004), and relational work (Locher & Watts, 2005). In all of these approaches,
interpersonal work is conceptualized not as separate or secondary to information transaction—
rather, it is integral to it. Further investigation underscores that transactional and interpersonal
discourses intermix in spoken workplace communication. In view of its frequently interwoven
occurrence, interpersonal discourse can often be detected on a micro-level, such as in speech
acts, or utterances that do not just convey information but perform actions. In one study on
spoken workplace interactions, Vine (2004) identified three speech acts which are characteristic
of transactional discourse: directives, requests, and advice. She referred to these as “control acts”
by which an addresser “attempt[s] to get someone to do something” (Vine, 2004, p. 27). While
these acts do “get work done,” they highlight interpersonal discourse’s integrative nature: As
“face-threatening acts,” or acts that inherently impose on an addressee, they normally require
linguistic modification through redressive politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, 1987).
Consequently, the control act producers in Vine’s study consistently sought to minimize threat
through mitigative interpersonal strategies which often occurred syntactically and lexically
interlaced with the transactional discourse.
Furthermore, Keyton et al.’s (2013) “inventory of verbal workplace behaviors” highlights
that transactional and interpersonal discourses are not only co-present, but rather balanced. Of
the four overarching factors they identified, two related to transactional goals, namely
information sharing (e.g., explaining, listening, giving examples, asking questions) and
organization (e.g., scheduling, making decisions). The other two related to interpersonal goals,
namely relationship management (e.g., creating small talk, joking) and expression of negative
emotion (expressing frustration and complaining). The authors suggest that interpersonal factors
not only share the stage with transactional factors in workplace communication: These factors
may form the pillars of organizational communicative competence. This view has important
pedagogical implications, because it suggests that those responsible for designing training in
workplace communication must account for learners’ command of transactional discourse, such
as sharing information or feedback, as well as learners’ understanding of how and when to
engage in primarily interpersonal discourse.
KD appears to recognize this responsibility inasmuch as it draws its learners’ attention to
both transactional and interpersonal aspects of different workplace tasks. For instance, when
learners are prompted to email the supervisor (as well as in later email tasks), a KD task includes
a specific cue: “Write a greeting for your email here.” In prompting learners to submit an email
greeting, the task portrays this relational move as essential to the email-writing task itself.
Though not explicitly stated in the task, the prompt draws the learners’ attention to interpersonal
goals.
More specifically in terms of workplace email communication, the previous section has
already highlighted transactional as well as interpersonal discourse. For instance, Gains’ (1999) e
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mails, like Koester’s (2006) spoken data, reflected both transactional goals (e.g., requesting
or sharing information on a project) and interpersonal goals (e.g., having fun or giving praise).
Moreover, it is noteworthy that many of the aforementioned email-specific features, e.g.,
informality and emoticons, typically serve interpersonal goals, such as transmitting emotional
and social information. This is interesting counterevidence to Culnan and Markus’ (1987) early
cues filtered out theory, which conjectured written media’s limited socioemotional bandwidth.
This limitation would be expected to impact professional communication, wherein various
scholars warn that emails can lead to interpersonal and professional issues (Mulholland, 2014),
such as misreadings of emotion (Byron, 2008) and distrust (Oliveira, 2011).
On the other hand, the aforementioned studies suggest that email senders do not use the same
cues as those used in spoken conversation, but they certainly employ resources to fulfill
necessary interpersonal goals. Based on a corpus study across four written electronic mediums
including email, Riordan and Kreuz (2010) reported that users deployed a “wealth of cues”
which primarily served to transmit emotion and guide message interpretation (p. 1806). The
authors focused on nonverbal textual cues typically associated with informal online writing, such
as capitalization, repeated punctuation, vocal spellings, and emoticons, which as typically
informal cues may have been all the more prevalent in non-workplace communications. These
cues’ prevalence supports social information processing theory (Walther, 2015), which predicts
that interactants will adapt any medium’s resources in order to realize interpersonal goals. In
extension, were a formal situation to restrict the use of nonverbal cues such as those observed by
Riordan and Kreuz, users would “adapt the encoding and decoding of social information (i.e.,
socioemotional or relational messages) into language and the timing of messages” (Walther,
2011, p. 458). In other words, interactants are capable of, and driven toward, realizing
interpersonal goals even through written electronic mediums like email, and even in more formal
interactions like workplace communications.
One study by Pérez Sabater et al. (2008) analyzed a corpus of one-on-one and group emails
by native and non-native speakers in light of four pre-determined features which contributed
mainly to interpersonal goals: (1) openings and closings, (2) contractions, (3) “politeness
indicators,” and (4) “non-standard linguistic features.” The latter two were less frequent, but all
categories occurred in the corpus, and many of their uses resembled non-electronic business
letter norms. However, these emails also incorporated more informal features than business
letters, especially when directed towards a single recipient. These findings, they suggest,
“demonstrate the emergence of a new style in writing for even the most important, confidential
and formal purposes which seems to be forming a new sub-genre of letter-writing” (Pérez
Sabater et al., 2008, p. 71). These authors aver that, rather than being a “chameleon genre” in
which anything goes (e.g., Droz & Jacobs, 2019), email communication reflects its own
developing patterns and pragmatic norms, and these may include greater tolerance for informal
features, and especially with certain audiences, while not exempting interpersonal discourse.
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Jensen (2009) focused precisely on lexico-syntactic interpersonal strategies in inter-company
email communications. He reported on the use of several “interpersonal features,” including
hedges (e.g., perhaps), boosters (certainly), attitude markers (unfortunately), self-mentions (I,
me), and engagement markers (imagine that . . . ). According to the author, all of these features
played a part in establishing the business relationship and, once established, in manifesting
comity. From this, he concludes that “far from being ‘lean’ e-mail is capable of conveying rich
information, i.e. e-mail can be used to reach interaction goals and build long-term business
relationships” (Jensen, 2009, p. 16).
Another analysis of written synchronous chat found that members of a “virtual team”
employed oralized features, such as typographically rendered paralanguage, as interpersonal
strategies, both between peers and in messages from managers to subordinates (Darics, 2010).
The managers availed themselves of these features, connected to informality, intimacy, and
collegiality, to minimize their status difference and the force of their directives (Darics, 2013).
What is more, Darics reported that the interactants prioritized relational work over
communicative efficiency (Darics, 2010), just as would be expected in spoken conversation
(Lakoff, 1973).
Finally, research also shows that interpersonal discourse impacts recipients’ perception of the
sender in work-related emails (Lam, 2011). In a roleplay study with undergraduate students of
business, Lam (2011) presented participants with emails containing varying request strategies
written by their hypothetical team leader on a work project. The participants reported higher trust
when the emails included supportive strategies (e.g., I know you are really busy . . . ) and
downgrading and hedging strategies (e.g., Could you possibly send me the file?). This was
especially true when (a) downgraders were presented in a syntactically direct speech act (e.g.,
Please write up a draft as soon as you possibly can.) or (b) when supportive moves occurred
with indirect strategies (e.g., I know you are busy this week, but could you write up a draft?).
Interestingly, indirectness did not significantly impact trust on its own, though politeness theory
predicts positive correlation between indirectness and politeness (e.g., Eelen, 2001). Considering
that the above findings highlight interpersonal aspects’ importance for email users and receivers,
employees and employers, it is all the more surprising that research has yet to account for these
complexities.
Though distinguishing between transactional and interpersonal discourses necessarily
simplifies blended phenomena, these findings suggest there are tenable ways to do so. Moreover,
breaking them down as such can help practitioners articulate otherwise convoluted and nebulous
expectations. It can also help grasp discourse community knowledge on a more specific level, as
both goals come into play in workplace genres with varying rhetorical aims. By way of example,
Figure 3 offers a focused conceptualization of interpersonal and transactional discourses as
interacting parts of both genre and rhetorical knowledge, placed in the context of workplace
email communication.
The Journal of Writing Analytics Vol. 5 | 2021 232Principles for Assessing Interpersonal Workplace Email Communication
Figure 3
Rhetorical Knowledge and Genre Knowledge in Workplace Email Communication
Interpersonal discourse
Ex: salutation and valediction,
question to invite confirmation or Genre
Rhetorical
alternative knowledge
knowledge
Ex: team emails
Ex: team emails
(Purpose: select
(Audience: peer
meeting time)
colleagues)
Transactional discourse
Ex: time and place details
As illustrated here, part of learners’ targeted discourse community knowledge in email would
entail using interpersonal discourse appropriate for the audience (such as the learners’
colleagues) and purpose (e.g., scheduling a meeting), while simultaneously involving use of
transactional discourse suitable to the same audience and purpose. Zooming in on these domains
as they relate to interpersonal and transactional discourses can be helpful for practitioners to
present and assess composite domain skills, not only to facilitate their learning, but to ensure that
no skill is taken for granted.
In summary, transactional and interpersonal discourses are often highly intertwined in
workplace communication, but there is good reason to parse these discourses. The above
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research suggests that (a) transactional and interpersonal discourses share comparable
importance in both face-to-face and email workplace communications, (b) their goals often
intermingle, as with transactionally-driven speech acts laced with politeness strategies, and (c)
many devices particular to email communication specialize in interpersonal goals. Taken
together, these findings indicate that interpersonal discourse matters and can carry important
weight in workplace communicative tasks. Thus, both transactional and interpersonal discourses
form a part of discourse community knowledge, but learners’ awareness of the two may differ.
Practitioners may therefore guide learners to focus on the respective demands of interpersonal
and transactional goals. It is thus timely to discuss effective ways of targeting and assessing both
transactional and interpersonal discourse through email tasks, and the KD prototype provides
practical examples of how this is currently being implemented in workplace communication
training.
2.1.3 Consideration 3: Workplace Email Communication Responds to Participant Roles and
Relations
The above subsections have underscored that acquiring business discourse community
knowledge, and email communicative skills particularly, entails attention to interpersonal
aspects. This brings up an essential consideration briefly mentioned earlier: that workplace
members tend to have varying ranks and familiarity, and these variables modulate discourse
norms. Our third tenet, therefore, is that workplace email communication responds to social
factors related to participants’ work roles and relationships.
In their foundational work, Brown and Levinson (1987) drew attention to how social factors
impact communicative action. They highlighted three central variables: (1) the task itself (e.g.,
the amount of inconvenience to the addressee entailed in a request), (2) the social distance
between the interactants (e.g., how close they are), and (3) their relative power (e.g., their status
in the conversationally-relevant setting; Brown & Levinson, 1987). Distance and power often
work together, such that high power differences make for wider social distance. Scollon and
Scollon (2001) have described power and distance in terms of three relationship systems:
hierarchical (as between supervisors and subordinates), deference (e.g., acquaintances), and
solidarity (e.g., friends). Potentially all of these, and certainly the first two, come into play in
most workplaces, and these social factors likely influence transactional discourse (e.g., a low-
ranking employee may need to provide more transactional detail in an email to show
preparation), but they may especially influence decisions regarding interpersonal discourse. This
is consequential moreover because Brown and Levinson’s and Scollon and Scollon’s accounts
predict that the different interactant roles in each system may correspond to different discourse
options. Though numerous variables we will address presently influence these options, the
predicted interpersonal discourse approaches may be roughly displayed on a continuum, as in
Table 1 below.
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